13 Cents for Hunger: Mid-Day meal drives students to school in Nepal

Amongst the students standing in the line is Shishir Praja, a fifth grader in the government school in impoverished part of Makwanpur mainly habituated by the marginalized Chepang community.

"Because the school provides with the tiffin, I attend it regularly which would ultimately save money in my home," Praja told ANI.

The 'Mid-Day Meal Program' locally known as "Diwa Khaja Karyakram"- governmental flagship intervention for providing free, on-site meals to children in community school is one of the few social policies that sits at the intersection of education, nutrition, poverty reduction, and gender equity simultaneously.

The program which now is in place across all the government schools feeding the students from lower secondary to the grade five had begun as a scattered, donor-supported feeding scheme in famine-prone hill districts. Over six decades into the practice the program has now become a near-universal entitlement for basic-level students, financed primarily through the national budget and implemented through Nepal's three-tier federal structure.

Here at the Shree Bal Jivan Jyoti Secondary School in Makari village of the Manahari Municipality in Makwanpur District students are provided with now five different varities of tiffin options throughout the week. Though the students used to get tiffin for six days, the introduction of two days' weekends have cut short the school days limiting it to five days a week now.

In order to ensure the dietary requirement of the children, the school has developed menu allotting dishes on the basis of the days, specially catered to fulfill the nutritional need.

"We get Haluwa, Porridge, Grams and beaten rice, ghee/sticky rice- Chamre as well as eggs," Sony Praja, a third grader of the Shree Bal Jivan Jyoti Secondary School told ANI.

The school once in a month also provide chicken/ mutton meat to the students as a part of the meal which indeed is the best day for the students here.

This mid-day meal program is designed to meet a meaningful share of a school-age child's daily caloric and protein needs (in-kind rations historically combined fortified corn-soya blend, flour, sugar, and oil to reach roughly 470 kilocalories per meal).

Locally, schools are increasingly encouraged to diversify menus with eggs, milk, pulses, and seasonal vegetables rather than relying on processed or packaged snacks.

Here at the Shree Bal Jivan Jyoti Secondary School in Makwanpur which has the provincial capital of Hetauda the mid-day meal is prepared in a makeshift kitchen, in a space under the stairs. On daily basis meal enough for about 130 students is prepared in this makeshift kitchen and then checked by the school nurse deployed by the local authority to ensure the quality.

In order to provide students with the mid-day meal, the government has been allocating 0.13 USD (noting 1 USD = 152.58 NPR) per student a day with higher rate in selected Far-Western/ remote districts.

Before the fiscal budget of 2026/27 the per head spending was capped at 0.066 USD all across Nepal with exemption applied in select under-developed region of the Himalayan Nation.

"Because of the mid-day meal the regularity of the student has continued to remain stable which has increased their attendance. As the families living in this area basically are from low-income sector, the number of Chepang community is also high, as it is one of the disadvantaged group they timely face issues resolving the hand-to-mouth problems. This mid-day meal has been helping them a lot and we have been ensuring that they would get it," Eakraj Gautam, the Principal of the Shree Bal Jivan Jyoti Secondary School told ANI.

The Government of Nepal through the Fiscal Year 2020/21 allocated a dedicated national budget line making midday meals mandatory in all basic-level community schools (Early Childhood Education and Development, or ECED, through Class 5), rather than a targeted subset of poor or food-insecure districts. School Education Sector Plan (SESP) 2022-2032 sets a long-term target of extending coverage through Class 8 and reaching an estimated 5.3 million students by 2032.

The government's financial commitment has grown sharply over time the program budget nearly quadrupled between 2017 and 2020 (from roughly USD 20 million to nearly USD 70 million), even as external donor support declined proportionally.

For FY 2025/26, the education ministry's overall budget was set at roughly 1,383,015,536 USD, of which about 66,791,129.44 USD was earmarked specifically for the midday meal program.

For FY 2026/27, the Education Minister confirmed the program's continuation within an overall education and sports allocation of 1,430,863,940.80 USD (about 10.3% of the national budget).

"The mid-day meal has been laying impressive impact. In some of the schools the attendance rate is high because of it; because of various reasons students are reported to come to school empty stomach in the morning also has been reported by teachers of the school. From the perspective of providing nutritious food to the students during the tiffin break, this has been laying positive impact ensuring their access to the education and further improving the quality of education," Pradeep Parajuli, Education Office at the Manahri Municipality told ANI.

This nationwide practice of providing the needy students with free meals were informally provided to underprivileged students in Kathmandu Valley government schools as far back as the 1950s.

The first structured national initiative was the Food for Education Project (FFEP), launched on August 30, 1967 across 37 districts with support from the UN World Food Program (WFP), targeting communities with limited access to basic services. As of the mid-2020s, the government-run program has reached close to 3-3.3 million children, from ECED through Grade 5, across roughly 29,000 community schools in all 77

districts.

With WFP/McGovern-Dole award this scheme covers an additional 100,000-120,000 children in the hardest-to-reach districts. This represents a dramatic scale-up from about 600,000 children reached in 2017, though the (School Education Sector Plan) SESP's 2032 target of 5.3 million (extending through Grade 8).

But the allowance is paid for 180 school days per year. In addition to it, the government allowance only covers an estimated 20-30 percent of the true cost of preparing a nutritionally adequate meal. This leaves schools' dependent on non-governmental and inter-governmental donor top-ups to close the gap.

Though the government has allocated 0.13 USD per student, it actually excludes the cost of preparation, dedicated kitchen space, adequate seating and other basic infrastructure. In some of the schools in Nepal, due to these constraints the authorities also have reportedly distributed cash directly to guardians instead of preparing meals on-site, raising the risk of funds being diverted away from their intended nutritional purpose.

"The amount being provided by the Government of Nepal is very is low. In the earlier fiscal year, the student contribution stood at 0.066 USD and it has now been increased to 0.13 USD. Amid this here at the school we have been preparing the meals by mobilizing our school staffs," Principal of the governmental school Gautam told ANI.

Falling sort of enough funding from the government, the school committee has been paying the staffs separately from their own sources to the staffs deployed in the preparation of the meals.

The public (government) schools on monthly basis submit the record of attendance of students to the education department of their local body and get the amount reimbursed

by first week of the next month. In an average the school claims 245 USD per month. Despite adopting the three tier federal structure, it is only the Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) which has been paying additional 0.7 USD to the schools bringing it to 0.21 USD per student for grades up to 5.

"If there is a small number of students enrolled in a school ranging from 25-35 would obviously have been creating challenges in preparation of the meals but it comes becomes easier to manage in schools where there are 1000 to 1200 students provided the quantity to be prepared. Having said that, the allotted 0.13 USD is definitely less provided the increasing inflation and market value, we also accept that it is not enough but also the schools have been managing it through this limited resource and using their own localized forms as well to overcome the shortcomings," Pradeep Parajuli, the Education Officer at the Manahari Municipality said.

Buffered between India and China, the Himalayan Nation of 29.2 million, is one of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) and now ranks 142 on the Human Development Index. In the 2025 Global Hunger Index, Nepal ranks 72nd out of 123 countries with a level of hunger that is moderate.

The mid-day-meal program which comes in line with the legal and policy frameworks ensuring shift from an ad hoc, donor-driven feeding scheme toward a rights-based, legally mandated entitlement has secured statutory recognition has outpaced consistent financing.

Nepal's newly adopted constitution of 2072, guarantees free and compulsory basic education and the right to food, providing the constitutional basis for school feeding.

Likewise, the Compulsory and Free Education Act, 2018 and Regulations, 2020, legally institutionalize midday meal provision, particularly for children from economically disadvantaged, socially marginalized, or disability-affected households, implemented in coordination with local governments.

The National Education Policy, 2019 frames the meal program as a retention tool to keep at-risk children in school. Meanwhile, the School Mid-Day Meal Management Support Manual, 2020 covers meal preparation, nutrition standards, procurement, and quality assurance at the school level.

The Nutritious School Mid-Day Meal Format Based on Local Production, 2024, a newer directive explicitly links school meals to local agricultural production and smallholder procurement. While, the Integrated National Social Security Structure, 2023 formally classifies midday meals as a social security program, not merely an education intervention. The School Education Sector Plan, 2022-2032 has set the long-term coverage and financing roadmap for the program.

The effectiveness of the program evaluated by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in 2014 in one of the district found it to have contributed to increased access to education,

particularly for girls and vulnerable children. The Gender Parity Index (GPI) for primary schools in the district rose from 0.97 to 0.99, indicating a potential link between the intervention and improved gender parity in enrollment.

"The government should give continuation to this program. It has an aim of extending it up to class eight and should achieve it. This is an effective program which has ensured zero hunger for the students who outside the school have been facing hand-to-mouth problem comes as a blessing. Provided its effectiveness and changing time the

allocated 0.13 USD is insufficient; we continuously have been making this complaint, the should increase the contribution then it would be more organized," Eakraj Gautam, the Principal of Shree Bal Jivan Jyoti Secondary School suggests. (ANI)